Blockchain News 30 January 2018

Cryptocurrency exchange ordered to stop broker business by German regulator

German Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) has ordered Crypto.exchange GmbH, a Berlin-based exchange, to immediately stop acting as a financial broker.

The order was issued after the exchange advertised on its website, btc-now.de, that it would sell customer’s bitcoins for euros and sell them on a stock exchange, says BaFin in a statement. The firm claimed the purchase price would be transferred to the investors within 30 minutes, it adds.

According to BaFin, the financial commission business operated by Crypto.exchange GmbH is not authorized by the regulator. The financial watchdog took the decision after users claimed that they did not receive any money for cryptocurrency that was transferred to the firm, Bloomberg states.

Sberbank’s Swiss subsidiary will trade in cryptocurrency

The subsidiary structure of Sberbank in Switzerland is preparing to begin trading in cryptocurrency for customers, said Andrei Shemetov, vice president of Sberbank and head of global markets for investment – Sberbank CIB. This is the first time a service of this kind is being offered by Russian banks.

Shemetov explained: “The product is very risky, the volatility is very large, so we will not provide these services to a wide mass of customers… We are now preparing the entire infrastructure in order to start providing services within the Swiss subsidiary… We are building a full trading setup so that we can both open our own position and provide customer services, that is, buy and sell to customers.”

Samsung has started production phase for ASIC chips for cryptocurrency mining

The Bell (Korean news website) reports that Samsung has began producing chips for Bitcoin mining this month.

The report says that Samsung had signed a contract with a Chinese hardware company related to Bitcoin mining, and has began production already on the chips – citing an unidentified Samsung official.

It also goes on to say that Samsung had also completed development of ASIC semiconductors for Bitcoin mining last year.